The Big Bad has an assistant or sidekick to whom they spend a lot of time bragging to about just how clever they are. Near the end, their assistant double crosses them spectacularly while their back is turned. Essentially, this is Deceptive Disciple, except that the Bastard Understudy is apprenticed to an Evil Mentor.

In many cases the Bastard Understudy appears to have been groomed as a successor of sorts. While the Big Bad hates the idea of defeat, they know they are not going to live forever, and the Bastard Understudy offers a continuation of their legacy. A sublime game of Xanatos Speed Chess keeps the Bastard Understudy just out of reach of the power... until the last play.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Code Geass: This is the modus operandi of the Big BadSocial Darwinist Emperor. By raising a family of Bastard Understudies and then encouraging them to plot and scheme against each other - and himself - over the throne, the Emperor hopes to produce a strong leader for Britannia. If Lelouch is anything to go by, his methods are quite effective. In reality, this is all a feint to distract them from his true motive: activating the Sword of Akasha and destroying God.

And the trope itself plays out with Schneizel and Charles. Schneizel prepares to assume command of Britannia and leaves Charles on his own. However, Lelouch killing Charles forces Schneizel to go into hiding.

"Fucking Ribbons" Almark in Gundam 00. He appears to be a harmless toady of the apparent Big BadAlejandro Corner, only to reveal himself as the key villain while Celestial Being kills Corner at the end of Season 1.

In NarutoKabuto and Sasuke represent the two different types of this: the latter learns all he can from Orochimaru and then "kills" him, while the former, after witnessing Orochimaru's death, has become obsessed with carrying on and perfecting his legacy. To be fair to Sasuke, in this particular case he acted out of principle- he might have planned on dumping Oro from early on, but he only killed him because he saw Orochimaru as an evil, sadisticpsychopath who had abandoned whatever higher purposes he once pursued, every bit as bad as the mass murdering brother he was training to kill. Which is exactly right, despite the irony that Sasuke himself has currently begun turning into exactly that type of person.

Mar Omega: Atoms betrays Unwetter by erasing him from the Anti-Bobo, and then declares that there is no god so he has to become one.

Comic Books

Inverted in The Metabarons, where the heroes have this as a tradition.

In The DCU, during Rogues Revenge, Zoom freed Inertia to train him into torturing superheroes on the grounds that it would make them better heroes. At the end of the series, Inertia murders the Weather Wizard's child and calls himself Kid Zoom. Zoom objects because that would not improve them. Inertia says he just wants to hurt them and reverts Zoom back to the cripple without superspeed. (The Rogues then kill him.)

Inverted in Necrophim - everybody thinks Uriel is trying to usurp the throne of Hell, but he just wants to loyally serve Lucifer.

Used in High School Musical 3. Sharpay gets an assistant who becomes her understudy in the play. Near the end she tries to take advantage of one of Sharpay's failed plans:

Sharpay Evans: But... you were so loyal. And sweet.

Tiara Gold: That's called acting. You should try it sometime.

From The Chronicles of Riddick, Vaako is the Lord Marshal's second-in-command, but thanks in part to his wife's promptings, takes his opportunity to betray him in his final fight with Riddick, for the good of the Necromonger faith.

Repo! The Genetic Opera subverts this with the Largo siblings—Rotti would like them to be ruthless, manipulative, and cunning enough to take over his empire, but they just don't cut it. Later Amber, against all expectations, convinces her brothers to back her as she takes control of Gene Co, but only because the chosen heir, Shilo, turned it down. Shilo would have had to kill her father to inherit the position, but she refused to.

The Mechanic. Charles Bronson plays the assassin for the mob, who grooms Jan-Michael Vincent's character (Steve McKenna, son of a dead mob boss) as his backup. Eventually, Steve decides he'd rather take over the main job. It doesn't end well.

Jigsaw from the Saw movies has passed on the secrets of his lethal Games to at least two such Understudies, Amanda and Detective Hoffman. Subverted in that neither of Jigsaw's apprentices actually share his make-your-choice philosophy: The first can't stand to leave any survivors to cope with their trauma after her Games, while the second just likes torturing people. And then, in the last twist of the series, Jigsaw is shown to have had a third apprentice, Dr. Gordon, who was loyal to his philosophy and is carrying it out "properly".

In Hellraiser: Bloodline, Jacques and his mentor the Duc de l'Isle are satanists who dabble in the dark arts by summoning demons. They summon one in the form of a Demon Princess, but Jacques quickly murders the Duc to be with her.

Literature

In Dune, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen serves as the Bastard Understudy to Baron Harkonnen. Feyd-Rautha actually launches at least one assassination-attempt against his uncle, but fails primarily due to bad luck. Notable in that he never really gets around to usurping the throne - the Baron dies by the Gom Jabbar before he gets the chance.

And Feyd dies in a duel against Paul soon after anyway.

Feyd is punished by the Baron as a result of the attempt on his life. Not for trying to kill him, but for FAILING.

In Stardust, the seven princes of Stormhold are always killing each other to strengthen their claim on the crown. Septimus is clearly the champion at this, and the reigning Magnificent Bastard of the book/film. So it should come as no surprise that Tertius, his much older brother, makes an attempt on his life. And fails, miserably. While Primus, the oldest and wisest, spends most of his time avoiding Septimus.

This apparently the expected method of gaining the throne - the old king is quite disappointed he still has more than one surviving son on his death.

Lensman. Among Boskone (and their controllers, e.g. the Eddorians) it is regarded as quite acceptable, even praiseworthy, for an underling to scheme to supplant their superior — the idea being that if he's successful the superior is no longer fit (e.g. not cunning and ruthless enough) to hold their position anyway.

In C. S. Goto's Warhammer 40,000Blood Ravens trilogy Dawn of War, Ahriman reflects on Magnus outdid the "False Emperor" and how he outdid Magnus — and how he keeps his own Prodigal Sons down, so no one would supplant him. (For instance, there is no Book of Ahriman, as there as a Book of Magnus, because he stole it.)

A Song of Ice and Fire: Sansa Stark's time with Petyr Baelish has her taking on this role. After being rescued from Cersei Lannister and whisked away from King's Landing, she spends the next few months at the Eyrie, posing as Littlefinger's illegitimate daughter. She spends half her time entertaining Littlefinger's guests and agents, along with babysitting seven-year-old Robert Arryn, whose status as Lord of the Eyrie gives Baelish, as his stepfather, titular rule of the region. The other half, she spends learning from Littlefinger in what could only be described as Magnificent Bastardry 101, as he walks her through his plans to not only take over the Eyrie and the Riverlands (which were given to him by Cersei earlier), but to reclaim the North in Sansa's name (as with all her brothers dead or missing, she is the heir of the Stark family) through a complicated arranged marriage, which would give him direct or indirect control of about 60% of Westeros' landmass. She might have problems with some of the messier aspects of the plan, but considering where she was before, she's coming along nicely. This is the only time we've ever seen Littlefinger confide his schemes in anyone else, it seems to have a lot to do with his transferred unrequited love for her late mother, and it's almost certainly going to be his eventual undoing.

Another prime example is Margaery Tyrell, with a twist. She's been groomed into following her Gran'sfine example for quite some time, now, and appears to be no slouch, as a result. But, she is still mainly following Olenna's plans even if she has the ability to adjust or elaborate on them, so may not, quite, be a fully graduated Magnificent Bitchjust yet. Give her time, though... At the very least, she seems to be House Tyrell's new stealth weapon deliberately aimed at other manipulators and powerplayers like Cersei and the current Council in Kingslanding, so may never go after her grandmother at all.

Duke Vessegno to Astfgl, the Satan-figure in Eric. When Rincewind sees them together his first thought, referencing Astfgl's similarity to a Panto Demon King, is "Look out, he's behind you."

This is the whole point of the Sith Rule of Two in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. To maintain the Sith organization, a Sith Lord intentionally takes on a Bastard Understudy apprentice in order to supplant and overthrow him when he becomes too old and/or weak. This is to prevent the Sith from destroying themselves, as a group of many Sith Lords would always succumb to infighting with each member vying to rule all.

Live Action TV

Believe it or not, Big Bad Astronema from Power Rangers in Space fits this. The Psycho Rangers were designed more to drain energy from Dark Specter than to destroy the rangers themselves, thus letting Astronema take over as Queen of Evil. Several scenes from this mini-arc consist of Dark Specter imploring loyal Astronema to find the traitor draining his power, never realizing that she's looking him right in the eyes and lying to his face.... And all of this was after he went to the trouble of luring her back to his headquarters and using cybernetic implants to brainwash away her Heel-Face Turn!

Apparently taking away her ability to feel positive emotions didn't make her more reliable. Go figure.

At first, almost completely averted, then played straight with a twist in American Gothic: Sergeant Ben Healy is certainly not being groomed to be Sheriff Buck's replacement—instead he lives constantly on the edge as his conscience (in the form of Merlyn) is at war with his cowardice and his loyalty to Buck, whose only plan consists of constantly balancing the two sides of Ben so that the cop won't reveal what he knows about Merlyn's death. Meanwhile, Buck actually is grooming a successor...his son, Caleb, who does indeed turn on him in the end.

Actor Masato Uchiyama has played two such characters in the Kamen Rider franchise: Yoshio Kobayashi/the Rabbit Orphnoch in Faiz and Shun Kageyama/Kamen Rider Punch Hopper in Kabuto.

Jamie from The Thick of It acts as this to Malcolm Tucker. He’s Malcolm’s unofficial second-in-command and his Violent Glaswegian tendencies come in useful whenever Malcolm needs help bullying government ministers, but in the Christmas specials Jamie makes his own play for power when he goes behind Malcolm’s back to get his own candidate in the leadership challenge put into power.

"Right, I'm off to deal with the fate of the planet. Be gentle with them." "Oh, you know me, Malc, Kid gloves — but made from real kids."

However, this just reveals that Malcolm has chosen his Bastard Understudy carefully; while Jamie is useful to Malcolm and certainly is not unintelligent or incompetent, compared to the Magnificent Bastard Malcolm Jamie is basically a bit of a shouty, violent bully whose Hair-Trigger Temper and resulting lack of charm means he lacks the ability to truly be a threat. Accordingly, Malcolm is largely unconcerned by Jamie’s manoeuvre because he knows it will ultimately fail, as it does.

Then has to spend the second half of the season playing the role again to Angelus (this time while waiting to heal and then pretending to still be crippled until he found his moment to strike).

Smallville: In Season 10's "Luthor" Clark visits an Alternate Universe in which he, Tess, and Lex all played this role to Lionel Luthor. Lionel plays the three of them against each other, hoping that the constant competition, and his belittlement of them will eventually drive one of them to kill him, ensuring that he and LuthorCorp (which is very close to being The Empire in this world) will have a worthy heir. None of them can quite pull it off though. Following his escape into Earth-1, the search for a new Understudy becomes a defining part of Earth-2 Lionel's character, and he makes repeated attempts to draft Lex's clone, Alexander, into fulfilling this role. That having failed, he may be cutting a deal with Darkseid in order to get the original Lex back.

In the real world Lex and Lionel's relationship had aspects of this, though that part of their relationship was more or less abandoned after Season 3 and Lionel's fall from the position of Big Bad.

The Shadow Line is full of them. Ratallack to Bob Harris, Jay Wratten to his uncle Harvey (and later Joseph Bede) and Patterson to Commander Khokar — all of whom eventually supplant their superiors and join Gatehouse in his new Counterpoint. Gatehouse himself is implied to have been working to undermine the Counterpoint leaders even before they tried to kill him.

In C-drama The Holy Pearl, a loose adaptation of Inuyasha, HuJi (Kagura-Expy) is this to Naraku/Ghost King. She resents being subordinate to him and spends a considerable part of the series trying to arrange his demise. And eventually almost succeeds.

This is D'Angelo's role in the Barksdale Organization in Season 1 of The Wire. He's being groomed and taught to someday be the man of the family and inherit the business from his drug kingpin uncle, Avon. Secretly, however, D'Angelo has grown extremely jaded about both the drug trade and his family planning out his whole life for him, and is practically dying to go all Defector from Decadence.

On Justified Bo Crowder was grooming his eldest son Bowman to be his right hand man and heir but while Bo was in prison, Bowman's wife had enough of the beatings he gave her and shot him dead. Bo then tries to recruit his second son Boyd to be The Dragon of his criminal empire but Boyd is going through a Heel-Faith Turn and rejects Bo. Bo finally turns to his nephew Johny who accepts the position but is secretly quite resentful of the 'third choice' part. Soon enough Johny is conspiring with Boyd to take Bo down but Bo is onto him and Johny ends up crippled for life. When Bo dies and Boyd takes over Bo's operations, Johnny becomes Boyd's second in command and this time hides his resentment better. However, when Johnny does make another grab for power, he is outmaneuvered by Boyd and has to go into hiding.

From the same promotion came the story of Sin-D and Nemesis, the latter even stating Sin-D's biggest mistake was giving her students so many secrets so freely.

Theater

In The Lion In Winter, Henry II deliberately encourages conflict amongst his sons to toughen them up for their role as leaders. He specifically grooms his inept youngest son, John, to take over as his successor (and has a Heroic BSOD when he discovers the boy scheming to usurp him with one of his other sons and the King of France.)

In the Beast Wars episode "Possession", Blackarachnia betrays Megatron for Starscream (yeah, that Starscream), convinces him to take her under his wing, and then double-crosses him for Megatron at the end of the episode. Starscream can't catch a break.

The Galaxy Force AKA Cybertron version of Starscream IS this however. And he succeeded in double-crossing Megatron until the writers brought him back.

Snively in Sonic Sat AM. Inverted somewhat since while Robotnik is perfectly convinced he is under his thumb, he does not view Snively with much high regard outside a toady and a punching bag. Snively merely picked an opportune time Robotnik had (supposedly) desposed of himself (with Word of God stating his rule would not have lasted long before the new Big Bad entered the fray). This is played with in the Archie comics where Snively has made numerous short lived attempts to overthrow Robotnik, to the point the latter just considers it a fun little game of "roulette".

Slade of Teen Titans actually wants one of these (yes, including the betrayal part, as his dialogue with Robin makes clear when he complements him on threatening him- it'd keep him sharp if nothing else). So far, however, he's had phenomenally bad luck in keeping one, and lampshades this at one point.

Brother Blood, who ran a school for apprentice supervillains, lampshades his own failure with this trope, when both his newest student and his star-pupil turn out to be undercover good guys rather than neophyte Bastard Understudies:

An episode of Evil Con Carne has General Skarr with a robot version of himself, who helps him usurp command from Hector. But by the end of the episode, the robot Skarr takes his advice of "Stabbing in the back and twist! Twist! TWIIIIST!" to heart, and manages to take command from him with a robot army. Skarr is very proud and happy of this... and then he's blasted by all the robots.

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